


Never want to let go

by moeblobmegane



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Fix-It, Gen, Introspection, Post-Finale, what makes a person a person???, wolf 359 killed my son so i'm fixing it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-26
Updated: 2017-12-26
Packaged: 2019-02-22 03:59:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13158816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moeblobmegane/pseuds/moeblobmegane
Summary: Eiffel thinks about who he is, and what being a person means.A post-finale fix-it fic.





	Never want to let go

**Author's Note:**

> I have A Lot of feelings, so this is unbeta-ed. I'll come back to it once I'm Not Crying Over That Finale.

_Doug listens to the tapes, from the first day he stepped into the Haphaestus until that last message he recorded for his daughter. It doesn’t feel like reliving anything. It feels like watching someone else’s life. He feels afloat, not knowing who he is anymore._

_In one of those logs, he and Hera talks about personhood, about what makes them who they are. He remembers Hera quietly telling him that she doesn’t want anyone to mess with her memories. “It was hard,” she had said, “but that experience is part of who I am. I’m me. No one should be able to take that away from me. Does that make sense, Eiffel?”_

_He has no memories. He can hear his respect for Renée. He can hear his admiration for Isabel. He hears about his confusion and apprehension towards Jacobi. He hears his affection for Hera._

_Hearing about it is different from living it. There are so much in those tapes, but there are things it does not capture, too. It takes him halfway through to even hear about Anne. He does not know what to feel about that._

__Renée_  calls him a hero for giving up his memories. Isabel calls him brave._

_He might have been._

_He wonders if he still is._

* * *

_In a way, it feels like he is given a second chance at life. He is Doug Eiffel, but he is not. He says “Minkowski” right. He does not disrespect Hera by calling her robot girl. He is careful, always so careful, about what he says. He’s heard about how he speaks, and he has learned from Past Doug’s mistakes._

_The others tell him stories about how he was launched into space, how he almost died from a deadly virus, about how he was the first person to directly talk to aliens, about how he survived by putting himself into cryo repeatedly until he lost all of his hair._

_He knows, from his last log, that he loves his daughter and that he wants to say sorry for every mess he made, but he does not remember what Anne looks like or what it must have felt when he saw her bleeding beside him in the car wreck._

_He wonders if losing his memories is the best thing that has ever happened to him in this journey._

* * *

_They come back to Earth, and by then he has heard every log twice or more. He has heard stories from each of them. He feels more grounded, but not quite._

_Isabel is an alien, but she still had the human Isabel Lovelace’s memories. She lives her life not governed by that, but she uses those feelings as foundation of who she is._

_Hera is an AI, but she has all her memories intact. All the pain, all the anxiety… she lives with it, and it adds up to who she is. She is Hera, strong and the best person he knows._

_He knows he can make new memories. He has been making new memories with them on their way home, but he can see the wistfulness from them too. They miss their Eiffel._

_He doesn’t know who Doug Eiffel is._

* * *

__Renée_  lets them live with her while they try to build a life for themselves. Hera is parked in an old abandoned Goddard Futuristics plot of land that only SI-5 knows about. Jacobi stays with her, most of the time, when he is not out being a double agent and finding out more ways to burn Goddard to the ground. (He and Isabel has been bonding over that, and it is terrifying to witness.)_

_Mr. Koudelka is a nice man, and he is fortunately as much a force as his wife is. He uses his sources and his fancy journalist job to get as much from Goddard as they could._

_Isabel starts randomly getting into Goddard buildings and breaking shit down, and Jacobi follows her with bombs to burn the trails._

_They find the Black Archives._

_They find Alana Maxwell’s mind inside a fancy big box, and Jacobi cries for hours._

* * *

_Isabel uses all her money to buy a whole building for Hera to transfer to. Jacobi claims the top floor for himself, Maxwell and his explosives; and Renée and her husband claims the second floor. Isabel owns the building so she stays wherever she wants, but she always end up on the second floor anyway._

_Hera flourishes with her new environment. She connects to the whole smart building and gives them the best accommodations. She connects to the internet and learns more about Earth._

_It feels like everyone is moving forward, and he is being left behind._

* * *

_“I found something,” Maxwell tells him. His logs are clear when it comes to Maxwell. Hera might have liked her, but past Eiffel did not. He thinks perhaps it was an ugly combination of fear and jealousy._

_He likes Maxwell now. He is Eiffel without his mind, and she is Maxwell without her body. He thinks she understand a bit of what he feels._

_She cannot touch Jacobi, and he cannot remember how it felt when Anne was born. They lost things they would rather have back._

_“What?” he asks, after too long a moment. He thinks too much, these days. It makes the others worry. Eiffel is introspective, but not this much. Eiffel used to talk a lot. He used to talk enough to fill the universe with his words.  
_

_“I might be able to give you back your memories,” she says slowly. He wonders if Hera can hear them from downstairs. They put Maxwell in the top floor, away from Hera’s domain, but Hera’s sensors are so much more powerful than Maxwell’s simpler form.  
_

_“What?”  
_

_She does not speak for a moment, but he thinks she will sigh in disappointment if she could. Being an AI has not lessened her dismay for the human race. “Remember your alien encounter?”_

_He does not remember it the way a person would remember memories, but he has heard enough to know what it was. “Not exactly, but yeah.”_

_“Oh,” she says, almost sounding embarrassed. “Poor choice of words, sorry.” She pauses, and he can hear her processors whirring quietly in the background. “I think, if we can establish contact, your alien friends might be able to give you back everything she took.” They don’t talk about Pryce. No one ever talks about Pryce anymore. (Or Cutter, for that matter.)  
_

_“Just like that?”  
_

_She laughs—a mimic of her old laugh, but laughter nonetheless. “It’s not a simple process, Eiffel.” She goes on to explain how it would work out, about the distance and the speed of communication and the unknown technologies of the aliens. She uses big words he cannot process and exclaims excitement about things he cannot understand. He thinks maybe the old Eiffel would have felt the same way. Maxwell has always been too smart for him to communicate with._

_“If- If we do this, what happens to my new memories?” There isn’t much, but he wants to keep the image of Renée’s smile while watching Star Trek. He wants to keep Jacobi’s annoyance when they convince him to stay and eat dinner with them. He wants to keep Isabel’s triumph. He wants to keep the sound of Hera’s laughter whenever he forgets about earth’s gravity.  
_

_“They’ll still be there,” Maxwell promises. “They have technology we don’t. It’ll be just like sending an e-mail. You’ll get everything back.”  
_

_Everything, huh?_

* * *

_He thinks about all the mess he made, about the stupid things he did before Haphaestus. He was an alcoholic. He was the reason his daughter lost her hearing. He was in prison for endangering children. Hilbert died. Before that, he got a deadly virus that gave him so much pain. He put himself in cryo so many times he lost all his nails. He almost died. He hurt people, and got hurt too. He was pushed to make decisions that left scars on everyone involved._

_Will it help to bring all those back?_

* * *

“ _Hey, Hera, are you there?”_

_He likes to think the pause before her answer is her rolling her eyes at him. He likes the image. (Hera once told him that they saw each other in his mind. It’s one of the memories he wants to get back. He wants to know what she looks like, and what it felt like to see her in that way.)_

_“I’m always here, Eiffel.”  
_

_He laughs. “I know.”_

_“Do you need anything?”  
_

_“Did you hear what Maxwell told me?” He looks up at the camera and sees it move to face him. “About… about my memories?”  
_

_“Yes,” she answers. “I d-did.” She still glitches sometimes, but not often. It’s proof enough that this particular topic makes her nervous._

_“Do you think I should try it?” He closes his eyes and thinks about the past months. There are some nights he cannot sleep because he feels a hole inside his chest. There are some days when Isabel would say something and everyone would grow quiet because the old Eiffel would have known that reference. It has not been all bad, but a part of him died with the Haphaestus, and the thought of getting it back makes him feel like he could be alive again.  
_

_“It’s your choice,” she says, voice soft and quiet. “Eiffel, it’s your memories. You get to decide if you want them or not.”  
_

_“You didn’t want anyone to take your memories away,” he says.  
_

_“It was my choice to keep them,” she replies. “It can be your choice to stay like this.”  
_

_“But you want your best friend back.” He knows. He can hear it in the silence after a particularly hard day fighting Goddard. She wants the Eiffel who fought with her, who loved her and who trusted her with his life. (He still does. He still loves her and trusts her, but it’s not the same. It’s. Not the same.)  
_

_“I want you to be happy,” she says. “If not remembering about everything we’ve been through would do that, then…”  
_

_He sighs. What would make Doug Eiffel happy?_

* * *

_Would you take the red pill or the blue pill?_

* * *

_He climbs the stairs to the top floor and watches as everything around comes to life. Lights flicker on and a holographic image of Maxwell appears at the center of the room. “Hello, Eiffel. Have you made your decision?”_

_He nods._

* * *

_The blue pill is safety. The blue pill is having no ptsd. The blue pill is watching Star Wars for the first time with Renée and Hera. The blue pill is never remembering the pain of being a fuck up dad._

_The red pill is all the horrors Wolf 359 brought. The red pill is ptsd and anxiety and depression. The red pill means repeating the image of Anne getting hurt over and over again, reminding himself that he caused the most important person in his life immeasurable pain._

_But the red pill is the truth._

_The red pill means he gets to be Doug Eiffel again._

* * *

_“Hello, dear listeners. It’s ya boy Dougie. Feels good to be back.”_

**Author's Note:**

> Comments would be greatly appreciated!!! Talk to me about Eiffel and Wolf 359's view of personhood!!!


End file.
